Achieving a just and lasting peace in Palestine remains an elusive goal, hindered by decades of Israeli disregard for international law and Western complicity.
Nikolaos van Dam [2]
When I began working at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs half a century ago, one of the key phrases in our policy was the pursuit of a “just, comprehensive, and sustainable peace settlement” for the Arab-Israeli conflict.
But no one ever mentioned that a “just peace settlement” was completely unattainable. Such a settlement would, at the very least, have required addressing the immense suffering and violence inflicted upon the Palestinians with the establishment of the State of Israel.
To gain full membership in the United Nations in 1949, Israel was required to meet certain conditions. These included accepting the well-known 1947 UN Partition Plan for Palestine and recognizing the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes or receive compensation. Israel formally accepted these terms, which implied that Israel would need to withdraw to the borders defined in the 1947 Partition Plan, allow the return of Palestinians to their original homes, and recognize Jerusalem as an international city. However, once Israel secured UN membership, it blatantly ignored these commitments. This marked the beginning of more than 75 years of Israel arrogantly disregarding UN resolutions.
The right to self-determination for Palestinians was first recognized by the European Community, and thus also by the Netherlands, in the Venice Declaration of 1980. While this appeared to be a significant step forward, the recognition of Palestinian self-determination was in fact tied to the establishment of a peace agreement with Israel. This allowed Israel to dictate the extent to which Palestinian self-determination could be realized, which, in practice, was non-existent. Israel had no intention of granting Palestinians self-determination and preferred to see them gone altogether.
From a Zionist perspective, Palestine was to become entirely Jewish, ideally with as few Palestinians as possible or none at all. And because Israel’s violent policies were consistently condoned—if not outright admired—by the Western world, Israel has repeatedly gotten away with its actions to this day, regardless of whether they amounted to gross war crimes.
At the time, the Dutch government used terms such as “even-handedness” and “equidistance” in reference to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. But the Netherlands was far from neutral. How can one be neutral between an occupier and an occupied people? Between a state founded on war crimes and its ethnically cleansed Palestinian victims? Of course, such neutrality is impossible. The problem, however, is that the politicians who pursue such policies fail—or refuse—to see this. They are blinded by their sympathy for the Israeli perpetrators and suffer from a colossal blind spot.
And what about the frequently mentioned Israeli “right to self-defense”? War criminals are always threatened by those who believe that criminals should be held accountable for their atrocities. Do war criminals have a right to self-defense? Do leaders responsible for large-scale massacres have a right to self-defense? And if those leaders hold power within a state, does that state automatically have a right to exist? That is actually the wrong question. It is true that peoples have a right to exist, but states do not necessarily, and their leaders certainly do not if they are war criminals.
The Russian Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky wrote as early as 1923 that “as long as the Arabs feel even the slightest hope of getting rid of [the Zionist Jews in Palestine], they will continue to cling to that hope.” For this reason, Jabotinsky believed it was necessary to build a so-called “iron wall” around Israel.
As long as Israel maintains its military superiority—and we witness this repeatedly when Israel attacks various countries beyond its so-called iron wall—it will not truly be in direct danger. But that does not mean that the Arabs—and the Palestinians in particular—will stop harboring hope of ridding themselves of Israel. This seems entirely logical, given what has been inflicted upon them by Israel. And that hope—even if it is a futile hope of ending the Israeli occupation and the associated terror—will only persist and even grow, if only because of Israel’s ongoing criminal behavior. This is not “anti-Semitism,” as it is so eagerly labeled in the West and in Israel; no, it is hatred against the occupier. And there is nothing unusual about that; it would be strange if it were otherwise.
The question now is whether Israel, with its acts of war, will ever be able to feel truly secure. I think not. Israel largely has itself to blame for this perceived insecurity, and this potential insecurity only grows as Israel continues to commit more war crimes against its neighbors and distant enemies.
Still, it would be wise for Israel to recognize that a long-term vision is essential to ultimately achieving peace with its Arab neighbors.
The path Israel has followed so far, however, is one of reckless escalation through brute force, based on the assumption that the Arabs will one day simply surrender and submit to Israeli-Jewish dominance in the region. That is naïve and devoid of any realism.
With the current Israel, no genuine peace can be achieved, except for a peace in which the Arabs are subjugated to the superior Jewish state, along with the continued occupation of Palestine, cleansed as much as possible of Palestinians. Peace with such an Israel is no peace at all.
The question now is: what can we do about this? The first answer is: very little, because Israel will not heed us, especially as it knows it has unwavering support from the United States, thanks to its powerful lobby. But that is absolutely no reason to adopt a defeatist attitude, folding our hands and doing nothing. Israel must, in fact, be compelled to make peace—not only in its own interest but also in the interest of the Arab inhabitants of the region and in our own European interest. However, under the current balance of power, that is not going to happen. What we can do is pursue a clear policy based on objective standards of international law, without applying double standards.
We can also hold Israel accountable when it fails to comply with existing international rules, as it has done for more than 75 years. Those who refuse to listen must feel the consequences. This includes measures such as terminating the European Union’s Association Agreement with Israel, boycotting Israeli products, divesting from Israel, and imposing sanctions (commonly referred to as BDS). This also means no weapons to or from Israel and no imports of Israeli spy equipment.
And none of that Dutch weak approach about whether or not to label products from illegal Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian and Syrian territories. That simply leaves it up to Dutch companies and their consumers to decide whether they want to knowingly trade in stolen goods from Israeli war criminals. In the Netherlands, dealing in stolen goods is punishable by up to eight years in prison. But apparently, this does not yet apply when it comes to illegal products from Israeli settlements in the occupied territories. It is high time for that to change.
These settlements, of course, are an extension of the Israeli government, which is responsible for them. That is why boycotting Israeli products and services in general is more appropriate, under the Dutch adage: “Stolen goods do not prosper.”
If we were to treat Israel purely based on objective criteria of international law and follow through with the necessary consequences, we would already be a great deal further. You would think that nothing could be simpler. Yet when it comes to Israel, many politicians trample on the very principles they themselves have endorsed. This must end—for everyone’s benefit, including the international legal order and Israel itself.
1 Speech delivered at the Palestine Conference in the city of Tilburg, The Netherlands, on January 27, 2025, organized by the Dutch political party DENK.
2 Nikolaos van Dam is a member of the Advisory Board of The Rights Forum and a former Dutch ambassador to Indonesia, Germany, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Egypt, and Iraq, as well as Special Envoy for Syria. As a young diplomat, he served in Lebanon, Jordan, the Palestinian Occupied Territories, and Libya. Website: http://nikolaosvandam.academia.edu
